UKIP Got a Bulgarian to Deliver Anti-Immigration Leaflets

UKIP, the 1970s cracker joke of political parties, got a big EU-approved egg broken all over its massive xenophobic face again today, after its candidate for Dover, David Little, employed a man from Bulgaria to deliver leaflets to would-be voters.

Obviously, there is nothing inherently wrong with employing Bulgarian men. But when one of your party's platforms is almost literally: "Stop Bulgarians and Romanians coming in, they are vampire gypsies here to suck our blood and steal our jobs and women, and they probably eat weird things as well, don't they? Hooves and that," hiring one to distribute leaflets that are ostensibly about sending them back – or stopping them getting here in the first place – is seen as something of a faux pas.

Labour councillor Peter Wallace was the first person to flag the goof, telling ITV News he found it "a bit weird" when a man with a "thick" Eastern European accent posted a six-page anti-men-with-thick-Eastern-European-accents pamphlet through his door.

"It's particularly weird he's Bulgarian, because last year UKIP were saying 'the Bulgarians are coming, they are going to take your jobs'," the councillor told ITV. "But now we see that it's them who are employing them."

Wallace added that the Bulgarian – far from lunging at him with a sharpened benefits form, before plunging it into the meaty part of his neck, then immediately claiming squatters' rights on his home – actually seemed pretty embarrassed to be peddling an anti-EU message, but confessed he was just "doing his job".

Before you consider that maybe UKIP have turned over a new leaf and are now firmly pro-Bulgaria: no, stop that. Last year, in August, UKIP brayed about the fact their doom-and-gloom prediction that Eastern European immigration would explode in the UK was sort of proven by ONS figures revealing that 178,000 people had arrived in the country from the A8 countries since job market restrictions were lifted at the start of the year. "Since the start of this year alone, a migrant influx equivalent to the population of Peterborough has arrived in this country," said UKIP migration spokesperson Steven Woolfe at the time. "This is simply unsustainable."

But in real terms, the increase in Romanian and Bulgarian workers was only up 13,000, or nine percent, year-on-year – in the first three months of European job restrictions being lifted, the figures were actually down by 4,000. Earlier that year, in May, Nigel Farage had to apologise for suggesting he would be unsettled if a Romanian family moved in next door to him ("Hide the pegs, Kirsten! They always come for the pegs!"), taking a newspaper advert out to insist that he wasn't racist. Basically: UKIP have form for turning the Romanian and Bulgarian migrant population into job-thieving, accent-having boogiemen.

So it's fair to say that the Dover leafletter is not a sign of a new, left-leaning, human-friendly UKIP. But, excuse-wise, you've got to hand it to David Little for trying – when asked for comment yesterday, he claimed that hiring a Bulgarian man to hand out anti-EU pamphlets was some sort of inspired, come-one-come-all inclusive hiring policy. A "How can I be racist? Some of my best leafletters are Bulgarian" sort of thing:

"We wouldn't ask if they have got any Pakistanis, Jamaicans or people with ginger hair working for them, would we?" he actually said. "I think it's absolutely fantastic UKIP is employing people and boosting the local economy. Shouldn't that be applauded? The young Bulgarian man has come here to make a better life for himself and he's been doing a fantastic job for us."

'It's just I really want the fucker sending back,' he didn't add, but presumably thought.

A Kipper's idea of a wet dream, remember, is Jeremy Clarkson barking "common sense" out of the window of a Saab 9-5 so sexily that they wake up nursing their first naturally-occurring erection since the 90s. UKIP voters think a Harvester prawn cocktail is "a bit exotic, thanks" and prefer to just go straight to their main instead, which is invariably a well-done steak.

Anyone who is UKIP was basically turned down for a spot on Bullseye once because their mullet wasn't considered luscious enough and have been harbouring resentment about it ever since. So don't think that this Bulgarian leafleting backpedal is anything more than them trying to side-swerve the fact that they're a political throwback party whose main agenda is to be allowed to say "chinky" again with wild abandon and build big grey walls around the entire coast of the UK to keep EU workers out.

Anyway: probably not the last we'll hear on the subject of "UKIP bungling something and doing a hurried explanation by way of their press office" between now and May.

@joelgolby

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